


the closer I am to fine

by gsparkle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Clubbing, F/M, First Meetings, Past Clint Barton/Bobbi Morse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-21 00:26:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6031381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gsparkle/pseuds/gsparkle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint hated dance clubs. The music throbbed too loudly for conversation. The beer was insanely overpriced. The entire place smelled like sweat and alcohol and stale cologne. Coming to this stupid nightclub with Steve and Sam hadn’t exactly sounded like fun, but the alternative--lying on his couch in sweatpants, mindlessly shoveling cheese balls into his mouth and watching increasingly unbelievable History Channel specials--seemed to be a pretty pathetic way to spend a Friday night. Especially since that was exactly what he’d been doing every night for the past month.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little something I've had sitting in my writing folder for almost a year now. Title is obviously from the Indigo Girls, and thanks as always to santiagoinbflat, who is literally the only reason I ever get anything posted.
> 
> Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy it!

****Clint hated dance clubs. The music throbbed too loudly for conversation. The beer was insanely overpriced. The entire place smelled like sweat and alcohol and stale cologne. Coming to this stupid nightclub with Steve and Sam hadn’t exactly sounded like fun, but the alternative--lying on his couch in sweatpants, mindlessly shoveling cheese balls into his mouth and watching increasingly unbelievable History Channel specials--seemed to be a pretty pathetic way to spend a Friday night. Especially since that was exactly what he’d been doing every night for the past month.

And, okay, maybe he wasn’t doing so great after the breakup. Maybe Sam was right and he was, in fact, spending way too many hours wrapped in a quilt listening to Bobbi’s favorite Indigo Girls CD over and over. Maybe it was time to move on.

Still, that didn’t mean he needed to be dragged into the Brooklyn docks to SHIELD, allegedly the hottest new club in the city. Steve was meeting up with somebody he’d met on one of those dating apps, but Clint didn’t see why both he and Sam needed to be there as backup. Bars had no food, and he was missing _Dog Cops_ , and--

“Put your arm around me and laugh.”

“What?” Most women who approached Clint at bars wanted to inform him that he’d sat in something, or that he’d wandered into the VIP section and needed to leave. Most women who approached Clint were not gorgeous redheads in very short dresses and very high heels. Most women did not look at Clint as if he was the answer to all of their prayers.

 _“Now.”_ Before he could quite react, the woman had slid under his arm and curled into his chest. “My name is Natasha, and I need to be your girlfriend for the next ten minutes.”

Clint _did_ laugh, then looked around. “Did Sam put you up to this?” Sam’s idea of getting Clint back into the dating world tended to involve a lot of pushing him into a crowd of women and hoping one stuck.

The woman-- _Natasha_ \--shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t know anyone named Sam,” she said. “Look, my ex is going to be here any second. Are you going to help me or not?”

 _Is there really any other choice?_ Even if he could resist the way her big green eyes tipped up at the corners, Clint had never in his life rejected a request for help. He was perfectly aware that getting involved would likely not end well; but hey, he was a month out of a messily ended relationship and bad ideas were the only kind he had.

“Yeah, alright,” he said with a shrug. He waved to the bartender and looked down expectantly. “What does this terrible ex look like?”

Natasha ordered straight vodka with a twist and grimaced as she threw it back. “Tall. Dark hair. Walking advertisement for _Asshole Weekly._ ”

Clint scanned the crowd that pulsed to the music. “Tall, dark, and asshole,” described about 85% of the male clubgoers, but only one of them was shoving his way through the crowd to get to them. As the guy approached, it became clear that he was the person who was keeping the Ed Hardy clothing line in business: a large skull and crossbones was emblazoned across his chest, surrounded by a banner which insisted that Love Kills Slowly. “You really dated this guy?” Clint muttered.

“I was young and impressionable,” Natasha sighed. She leaned back on Clint’s arm. “What’s your name, anyway?” Clint was just barely able to get it out before Crossbones was upon them.

“Natasha, baby, wanna dance?” It was as if Clint wasn’t even there. Natasha leaned away from the stinking wave of cologne that rolled off her ex and scowled.

“No, Brock,” she said, her voice sharp as she put a hand out to push him away. “Can’t you see I’m with my boyfriend?” She cuddled closer to Clint, but Brock’s attention remained completely focused on her.

“Ditch him,” he said with a shrug. Clint was beginning to wonder if he was invisible. “C’mon, you know you want to. Don’t you miss me?” Brock attempted to draw closer, an oily smile sliding across his face. He locked a hand around Natasha’s arm, and Clint had just about had enough.

“Buddy. The lady said no.” Clint smiled thinly and tried not to turn the woman under his arm into a human game of tug-of-war. “Go away.”

This finally peeled Brock’s attention away from Natasha. The grin dropped from his face as he at last gave Clint an insultingly dismissive once-over. He even went so far as to laugh before saying, “Please. A girl this hot doesn’t belong with the likes of you. Let’s go, honey.” He tugged on Natasha’s arm again and tried to pull her onto the dance floor.

Clint agreed wholeheartedly with this guy: Natasha was _galaxies_ out of his league. But she was shooting him a mildly desperate look, so he stepped forward, forcefully shouldered Brock backwards, and pried his hands off Natasha’s arm. “She’s not going anywhere with you,” he said, trying to make his voice firm and commanding the way Steve did.

Of course, the reason it worked so well for Steve was that he was, well, _Steve:_ six-foot-something and noble as fuck and built like a he’d been designed by Michelangelo himself. When _Clint_ gave it a try, all he got was an arrogant smirk, followed by a face full of knuckles and a hearing aid knocked loose as he fell heavily against the bar. “Um,” he said in what he dearly hoped wasn’t a whimper, _“Ouch.”_

“God _damn_ it,” Natasha sighed, or so he thought: his missing hearing aid meant that things were starting to sound fuzzed out and blurry. He tried concentrating on her lips instead, which was a mistake, because while he wanted to know what she was saying, looking at her soft red lips also kind of made him want to kiss her, which even he recognized was definitely not in the cards. So he tried again, focusing on the rounding and flattening of her mouth, and _wait, did she just say, “I’m going to kick you ass”??_

She was in motion before he could clarify, moving with a ruthless efficiency that damn near took his breath away. While Brock’s entourage watched, clearly boggled by the proceedings, Natasha stomped on his instep, shoved her shoulder into his solar plexus, and wrapped it all up with a knee directly between his legs. “Kindly go fuck yourself,” she told her ex, now a wheezing heap on the sticky bar floor. The crowd silently parted at her imperious glare and she turned back to Clint, who’d finally located his lost hearing aid. “Let’s go, Clint,” she said serenely, as if they weren’t stepping over the guy she’d just casually destroyed.

“That was stone cold,” Clint told her, awed, as he followed her through the crowd, “Stone _fucking_ cold.” The smirk she threw over her shoulder said _you’re damn right it was_ and oh god, he was _in love._ She led him to a table and slid onto the bench next to him for no reason that he could discern, head propped on one hand like she was waiting for a question. He had a few lined up, like _are you single_ and _will you marry me_ and others even more unsuitable, so he was glad that what came out of his mouth was tame. “If you could do all that, what did you need me for?”

Natasha’s mouth twitched into a thoughtful curl, that glorious red hair swaying across her shoulder like crushed velvet. “Just because I can doesn’t mean I want to,” she said at last. “Besides, kicking ass is a real pain in a dress this short. And you’re kind of cute.”

He must have gotten some beer in his hearing aid. There was no _possible_ way she’d just actually said that. “I can, uh, see how that might be a problem,” Clint stuttered, “The dress, I mean,” and it felt like the stupidest thing he’d ever said, but she laughed, a sultry chuckle that hit him straight in the gut. Emboldened, he added, “I’m sure the shoes don’t help.”

She raised her eyebrows in consideration. “You know, you’d be surprised. You never know when a stiletto will come in handy.”

He was pretty sure that was her thigh pressed up against his. He was almost positive that the hand on his upper leg was not an accident. He was, for the first time all night, glad that Steve and Sam had dragged his sorry ass out to this club. The voice in his head actually sounded a lot like Sam: _so go for it, man; what’ve you got to lose?_ And hey, what the hell, even being in proximity of this cherry bomb of a woman was better than cheese balls and Indigo Girls, right?

He put his hand over hers, which was still resting on his leg. “You wanna dance, or something?”

Natasha smiled and twined her fingers with his. Leaning close for a moment, she murmured, “How about both?” before climbing out of the booth and waiting with an expectant expression until he clambered out and led her onto the dance floor.

 _Oh yeah,_ Clint thought as she began to move against him and the mob of people pressed them closer together. _This is definitely better than cheese balls,_ so much better for so many reasons, that he didn’t notice Sam until he was right up next to them _._

“My _man,”_ Sam said with approval to Clint before offering a hand to Natasha. “Sam Wilson, Clint’s official wingman.”

This was why Sam was both the best and the worst friend Clint had. “If you were _really_ my wingman,” he muttered, “You’d be giving me a thumbs up from the other side of the club right now, instead of standing next to me.”

“That’s true,” Natasha added with a raise of her brow. “The longer you stand here, the less likely I am to let Clint take me home.”

Clint’s eyebrows shot up and he looked pleadingly at Sam. “Consider me gone,” his friend said with a grin. “Wingman out.” He began to back away into the crowd, but his progress was stopped by Steve, who’d apparently gotten the memo that Clint’s night needed to be sabotaged at all costs. He’d brought his date along, a brawny guy whose biceps were roughly the size of Clint’s own head. Considering the way they were leaning on each other, Steve’s freckled arms over the tattooed ones of his date, their evening was going pretty well; which was nice for Steve, and all, but Clint wondered why they couldn’t just take that success somewhere else and leave him alone.

“Hey,” Steve said, and Clint was prepared to go through the whole wingman song and dance again; but Steve was looking at Natasha, not him. “Oh good, you found him.”

“Evidently,” Natasha said with a little roll of her eyes, just as Clint whipped his head between the two of them and repeated, “‘You found him’?” At least he wasn’t the only one who was confused: Sam’s brow was creased in confusion, too.

Natasha lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I came with Bucky in case he wanted to flake on his date,” she explained, flipping a careless hand in the direction of Steve’s date. “But he obviously didn’t need me, and then I saw Brock see me and knew there was going to be trouble, so Steve recommended I come find you, and you know the rest.”

“Oh,” Clint said, feeling something inside him droop. _So Steve put her up to this. So she’s not actually interested. So I should have stayed on the couch after all._ “Well. Happy to help.” Feeling a bit like deflated balloon, he quickly said, “I think I’m gonna go catch the end of _Dog Cops._ Nice meeting you guys,” and proceeded out the nearest exit as fast as he could move.

The cool summer breeze was a relief after the claustrophobic humidity of the club. After a deep breath of clean air, he set off down the street, kicking aimlessly at rocks and crumpled beer cans. He was almost a block away when he heard the voice. “Clint? Clint, wait.”

He stopped and turned, waiting as Natasha strode up on those towering heels that clacked against the sidewalk. She looked even better under the streetlights than she had in the club: the dress, he could now see, was an emerald green which offset her red hair beautifully and made her already magnetic green eyes positively mesmerizing. _But she’s not interested,_ he bitterly reminded himself, _so get over yourself and be polite._ “Did I forget something?” he asked, patting his pockets and looking over her shoulder so he couldn’t meet her eyes and say something pathetic.

“Yeah,” she huffed, sounding annoyed. “Me.”

“I--” Clint started, still searching his pockets until the words finally made their way into his brain. He looked at her, completely baffled. “Wait. What?”

The look she gave him was crammed full of exasperation. “We were dancing, or something?” she said, more of a reminder than a question. _“And_ something,” she corrected herself with a dip of her shoulder, “Unless this _is_ the something?”

Clint looked at her: not at those gorgeous legs or that daydream of a body, just at the sincerity in the slope of her brow and the anticipation knit into her gaze. Realization splashed him in the face: this wasn’t Steve’s idea. This wasn’t a set up. “Um,” he said, drawing the sound out while he thought of something to say, “Yeah. Yeah, this is the something.” He used to be so much better at this. “We can go, uh--”

“To the diner around the corner?” Natasha supplied, an impish sparkle in her eyes. “Great idea: I’m starving.”

“That’s _definitely_ what I was going to say,” Clint grinned back. “Milkshakes? Nachos?”

“Both,” Natasha said, taking his hands in hers and beginning to pull him down the street. Her smile was brilliant and his heart, he feared, was officially lost.  “We’re definitely going to need both.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for be_compromised's 2017 Valentine's Day prompt-a-thon!

It was easy to ignore the mess the night before, because there had been only a sliver of moonlight sliding between the curtains, and even less than that between their bodies as Natasha pressed Clint towards his bed. Darkness had disguised the laundry piles and overflowing trash can in shadows, and besides, he liked to think that--though he was out of practice--he was still doing an okay job of holding her attention.

Steve had sworn up and down that rebounding was horrible, but Clint, so far, had no complaints whatsoever. Of course, this might have been because he hadn’t realized this was a date until Natasha had tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, twisted her lipsticked smile into a flirtatious smirk, and murmured, “I’ve  _ got _ to get out of these heels.” 

And whether it was the way the OPEN sign had sizzled neon highlights into her red hair, or the tilted curve of her hip as she stood, or just the fact that it’d been a long time since he’d lingered with someone beautiful far past midnight, Clint had found it too easy to suggest that she stay with him instead of schlepping all the way back up to Little Ukraine. “Bed-Stuy is closer,” he’d reasoned, though it wasn’t, really, and she’d curled such thrilling frisson around her agreement that he shouldn’t have been surprised by the way she’d kissed him against the door and out of his clothes.

But now,  _ now, _ golden light was seeping like honey into his loft, and everything that light touched was a cluttered jumble of chaos. There were cheese balls spilled across the couch next to a pile of underwear whose last date of wash was indiscernible, especially since his building’s washing machine was broken and so he’d recently been washing his clothes in the sink--except, well, he hadn’t had much motivation to do the dishes lately and so the sink was piled too high with greasy plates to do much laundry, anyway. 

Normally, Clint enjoyed waking up early, especially when there was someone gorgeous curled against his chest, but he couldn’t just lie there and let himself get turned into a one night stand horror story, especially since he would prefer for whatever this was to last longer than one night. Natasha slept like ivy, her limbs twined around his like they belonged there, and it was the hardest thing in recent memory to trade her sleepy embrace for rubber gloves. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that having a clean apartment wasn’t going to change whether not not she’d see him again, but it created enough false hope to motivate him through taming the monster pile of plates, dusting all the orange residue off the couch, and, for lack of better solutions, hiding all the laundry in the bottom of his coat closet. 

He was drying dishes and brewing coffee when Natasha appeared in the kitchen, sheets tied up under her arms like some kind of goddess. “I like your apartment,” she said, her fiery hair tumbling across her shoulders as she looked around. With a smile that he could only describe as wicked, she added, “It was a lot, mm, scarier last night, though. Nothing that bad,” she assured him with a glint in her eye, “Just stepped on an unexpected cheese ball or five in the bathroom.”

Clint slumped against the counter. It was one thing to be a general slob, but a disgusting bathroom, he knew, was the kiss of death. “I guess that means you don’t want to go for brunch,” he said, trying not to let defeat creep into his tone; this was, after all, his own damn fault.

For a moment, the only sound was the percolation of the coffee, and then Natasha laughed. “You idiot,” she said, pulling his face down to hers. “It means that tonight, we stay at  _ my _ place.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ten points for you if you caught the tiny reference to Happy Endings, one of my favorite shows :)
> 
> Feel free to stop by my [tumblr](http://www.quidnunc-life.tumblr.com) and say hi!


End file.
